Carrie Fisher

Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress and writer.

Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, to actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher.

Fisher's paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, while her mother, who was raised a Nazarene, was of English descent.

Fisher was two years old when her parents divorced in 1959.

Her father's third marriage, to actress Connie Stevens, resulted in the births of Fisher's two half-sisters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher.

In 1960, her mother married Harry Karl, owner of a chain of shoe stores.

Reynolds and Karl divorced in 1973 when Fisher was 17 years old.

Fisher "hid in books" as a child, becoming known in her family as "the bookworm".

She spent her earliest years reading classic literature and writing poetry.

She attended Beverly Hills High School until age 16, when she appeared as a debutante and singer in the hit Broadway revival Irene (1973), also starring her mother.

Her time on Broadway interfered with her education, resulting in her dropping out of high school.

In 1973, she enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months.

Following her time there, she was accepted at Sarah Lawrence College, where she planned to study the arts.

She later left without graduating.

Fisher's other film credits include Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Soapdish (1991), and The Women (2008).

Fisher made her film debut in 1975 as the precociously seductive character Lorna Karpf in the Columbia Pictures comedy Shampoo, filmed in mid-1974, when she was age 17.

Lee Grant and Jack Warden play the role of her parents in the film.

Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn also star in the film.

Fisher played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films (1977–1983).

In 1977, Fisher starred as Princess Leia in George Lucas' space-fantasy film Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.

Though her fellow actors were not close at the time, they bonded after the commercial success of the film.

In April 1978, Fisher appeared as the love interest in Ringo Starr's 1978 TV special Ringo.

The next month, she starred alongside John Ritter (who had also appeared in Ringo) in the ABC-TV film Leave Yesterday Behind. At this time, Fisher appeared with Laurence Olivier and Joanne Woodward in the anthology series Laurence Olivier Presents in a television version of the William Inge play Come Back, Little Sheba.

That November, she played Princess Leia in the 1978 TV production Star Wars Holiday Special, and sang in the last scene.

Fisher appeared in the film The Blues Brothers as Jake's vengeful ex-lover; she is listed in the credits as "Mystery Woman".

While Fisher was in Chicago filming the movie, she choked on a Brussels sprout; Dan Aykroyd performed the Heimlich maneuver which "saved my life", according to Fisher.

She appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes from King Kong in 1980.

The same year, she reprised her role as Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, and appeared with her Star Wars co-stars on the cover of the July 12, 1980, issue of Rolling Stone to promote the film.

Fisher worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor, including tightening the scripts for Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Wedding Singer (1998), and many of the films from the Star Wars franchise, among others.

Fisher was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds.

She and her mother appear in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a documentary about their relationship.

She was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her performances in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2007) and the Channel 4 series Catastrophe (2017).

Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and an autobiographical one-woman play, and its non-fiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the play.

She wrote the screenplay for the film version of Postcards from the Edge which garnered her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and her one-woman stage show of Wishful Drinking received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special.

She reprised the role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017) — a posthumous release that was dedicated to her — and appeared in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), through the use of unreleased footage from The Force Awakens.

It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

She earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.

Fisher died of a sudden cardiac arrest in December 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles.

She was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2017, and was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album the following year.

In 2023, she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.